A 30-year-old Calhoun County man was arrested Wednesday and charged with one count of third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor, a felony that could carry up to 10 years in prison. Investigators say a CyberTipline report submitted by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children led them to Robert Wayman, who authorities say possessed files containing child sexual abuse material.
According to wistv.com, the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office made the arrest, with the Calhoun County Sheriff’s Office and the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force assisting the investigation. The case marks Wayman’s second brush with the law over similar allegations: he was convicted in 2020 of disseminating obscene material to a minor 12 years old or younger, according to authorities cited by the station. As reported by WACH, the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office will prosecute the case.
How the Tip Reached Investigators
The CyberTipline, run by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, has served as the primary national mechanism for the public and electronic service providers to report suspected child sexual exploitation since it was created in 1998, per missingkids.org. The organization says it identified and escalated more than 53,000 reports to law enforcement as urgent or involving a child in imminent danger in 2025 alone.
The volume and nature of these reports have shifted sharply in recent years. The same missingkids.org data shows reports of online enticement rose 158% and reports of child sex trafficking climbed 323% between 2024 and 2025, with the CyberTipline logging 1.4 million enticement reports in 2025, including more than 80,000 concerning sextortion. Reports submitted by electronic service providers that year contained 61.8 million images, videos and other files tied to suspected exploitation incidents, and the organization recorded an average of 137 financial sextortion reports per day, a 37% increase from the year before.
South Carolina's Own Numbers
South Carolina has not been insulated from that growth. In 2023, 7,778 CyberTipline reports were made available to law enforcement in the state, and NCMEC reviewed 22 submissions of child sexual exploitation material from South Carolina agencies that same year, according to the organization's state data. NCMEC also assisted with 335 missing-child cases from South Carolina in 2023 and received more than 18,400 reports nationally related to child sex trafficking.
Wayman's case is not the only one South Carolina's Internet Crimes Against Children task force has pursued through a CyberTipline referral. In a separate case earlier this year, investigators said a CyberTipline report led them to a man identified as Hewitt, whom investigators said distributed files of child sexual abuse material; he was arrested on April 3, 2026, according to the South Carolina Attorney General's Office.
